Foster forgives
Published:Sunday | April 29, 2012 | 12:00 AM
Jailed by her lies, freed by her truth
The lies she was forced to tell sent him to jail. Four years later her conscience led her to tell the truth that has set him free.
That's how 38-year-old David Foster views that 15-year-old girl who, in 2008, told the police that he had abused her before coming clean in 2012 and presenting the police with sufficient evidence to arrest the real attacker.
Foster has no bitterness towards the child; instead he is pleading for the State to assist the young girl who he believes is a hero for finding the courage to defy an adult she was clearly afraid of.
business run-down
Reports are that the alleged attacker had threatened to murder the child and her mother if she had not blamed Foster for her ordeal.
"Is not she tell the lies, is the man put her up to it, and you must remember she was just a baby," Foster told The Sunday Gleaner last week hours after he was cleared of charges of carnal abuse, indecent assault and buggery.
"Me lose everything and me business run-down and me would like to set it up back, but me think them things deh a vanity; me more concerned about the little girl," declared Foster.
He added: "When me think about everything that she go through and what she still going true, it rough pon her man. It rough to know that she has to go through all of this at such a tender age."
A concerned Foster expressed fear that the child could face mental and physiological problems from an ordeal which started before she was fully 12 years old.
He is urging the State to arrange some counselling and other interventions for her.
Foster also expressed concern about how her stay in State-run places of safety and children's home may have affected her.
"Them place deh (children's homes) come like jail where the strong and the bigger children pick on the weaker ones. Them place deh no right," said Foster.
And even as he worries about the child, he is also clear that he has no bitterness towards her mother.
"As a mother she have to support her child if she tell you say a me do it, so me no have nothing against the mother or the child."